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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

It's complete . . . more or less. I quickly made up a diaper for the baby (not my best work, but functional) so that we wouldn't have that "nude doll syndrome" that seems to always come with having dolls in the house. Yes, it's removable, so that still may happen, but at least we've got something to come back to and use to make the baby decent again.

Monday, April 20, 2009

It's a good thing I have a friend who knows how to crochet. I'm pretty sure without her help (did I say help - - I mean, she did it for me), the baby doll I'm crafting up for Little Miss would be hairless. Ugh. I sat there with the crochet hook and the yarn and the instructions for about an hour before I finally gave up and called her in.

It was sweet though. We had a chance to hang out together for a while and chat . . . and she whipped up 2 different hair possibilities for the baby in a short period of time. One thing I resigned myself to when I decided to call her . . . after all the agonizing I did over yarn choices and wanting to make this multi-textured wig for the doll (because I think I'm SO cool like that) . . . well. Let me tell ya. It became clear when Little Miss got her hands on the doll's head and arms that she was envisioning a "baby". And guess what, folks? Some babies have hair, but not LOTS of hair. So we came up with a simple, but very cute hair style to go on the baby. I am pleased with the way it turned out. My friend and I realized after it was done that the baby was bearing a weird resemblance to my brother-in-law (who also happens to be Little Miss' favorite person at the moment). We went with the curly cinnamon bouclez . . . and anyone that has seen my brother-in-law lately knows that he is the crazy curly topped man. Seriously, dude has a 'fro.

IN SPITE OF THIS, however, after my crocheting genius left and I finally completed sewing the wig down onto the baby's head . . .

Little Miss caught sight of the baby, ripped it out of my hands, and proceeded to try to RIP THE BABY'S HAIR OFF.

Apparently, babies are only bald in her world and this cute 'do was just too much for her. I'm hopeful that she'll warm up to it once I am able to make some clothes for it. As my husband pointed out, the baby is still naked everywhere else . . . maybe it's odd to her that the baby has hair but not clothes. I am hopeful that he's right, but I somehow doubt it.

Monday, April 13, 2009

With Little Miss' 2nd birthday fast approaching, it was time to get my craft on again. Specifically, it's about time I got to that Waldorf doll I've been planning on making her from forever ago. I'm pleased that I was able to make progress on it this weekend.

A few thoughts on this baby-doll-making business:

It's tough! Crafting these dolls is most definitely a labor of love. No wonder I've seen these types of dolls sell from $80 to $200. These things take time. And care. Just crafting the basic pieces (not even assembling them yet), I probably spent about 4-6 hours. That included cutting the pieces, sewing them together, shaping the head, and stuffing the arms legs and body. Whew!

It's kinda satisfying. As much as I've been wanting to make this doll for her, I've been putting it off because looking at all the random supplies . . . well, the task just kinda seemed overwhelming. And since I have such a tendency to over-research everything, I had read that they can be quite difficult to make and they are labor intensive. So basically, get ready to spend some serious time with them. The thing is after I hemmed and hawed over the head construction, wondering if I was doing it quite right, I pulled the flesh-colored fabric over the top of the inner head shaping I did and it actually looked kinda good. And I was a little amazed with myself. After spending so many hours on Friday night working on the doll, I wanted to see how Little Miss would react to it. So I did what any other weird crafting person would do. I kind of held up the head/top of the torso (which has the arms attached) with the body (unattached at this point) for her to see. She immediately grabbed it out of my hand, basically only getting her the head with the arms attached. She didn't seem to care though. She left the body and legs behind and held the head so close saying things like, "This is my baby" and "I love baby." Geez . . . if she can love the baby with no body and no face or hair . . . I would say that's a project worth finishing!

I was able to spend some more time Saturday night working on completely assembling the body so that we wouldn't have any more disembodied head cuddling. I thought I would get a lot more done than that, but the truth is, just hand stitching out the feet and legs, and attaching the body to the arms and head . . . I probably spent another 4-6 hours just on that. It's crazy to think about how much time something like this takes, but I've enjoyed it so far. Little Miss saw the baby all put together this morning and became very possessive of it, wanting to take it around the house with her everywhere and refusing to put it down for meals and so on. I made her leave it at home when we went to church (I'm not finished with it yet!), but when we got home you better believe she went right back to it.

I had work to do this evening so I wasn't able to spend any time with it, but now that the basic construction is done, all I have to fret about is not messing up the facial embroidery and the hair. I have never crocheted before and I think I will have to learn how to in order to make a wig to sew down on the baby. We'll see how that goes . . .